Countering the Problem of Falsified and Substandard Drugs
The adulteration and fraudulent manufacture of medicines is an old problem, vastly aggravated by modern manufacturing and trade. In the last decade, impotent antimicrobial drugs have compromised the treatment of many deadly diseases in poor countries. More recently, negligent production at a Massachusetts compounding pharmacy sickened hundreds of Americans. While the national drugs regulatory authority (hereafter, the regulatory authority) is responsible for the safety of a country's drug supply, no single country can entirely guarantee this today. The once common use of the term counterfeit to describe any drug that is not what it claims to be is at the heart of the argument. In a narrow, legal sense a counterfeit drug is one that infringes on a registered trademark. The lay meaning is much broader, including any drug made with intentional deceit. Some generic drug companies and civil society groups object to calling bad medicines counterfeit, seeing it as the deliberate conflation of public health and intellectual property concerns. Countering the Problem of Falsified and Substandard Drugs accepts the narrow meaning of counterfeit, and, because the nuances of trademark infringement must be dealt with by courts, case by case, the report does not discuss the problem of counterfeit medicines.
Meyler's Side Effects of Drugs: the international encyclopedia of adverse drug reactions and interactions
Meyler's Side Effects of Drugs: The International Encyclopedia of Adverse Drug Reactions and Interactions, Sixteenth Edition builds on the success of the 15 previous editions, providing an extensively reorganized and expanded resource that now comprises more than 1,500 individual drug articles with the most complete coverage of adverse reactions and interactions found anywhere. Each article contains detailed and authoritative information about the adverse effects of each drug, with comprehensive references to the primary literature, making this a must-have reference work for any academic or medical library, pharmacologist, regulatory organization, hospital dispensary, or pharmaceutical company. The online version of the book provides an unparalleled depth of coverage and functionality by offering convenient desktop access and enhanced features such as increased searchability, extensive internal cross-linking, and fully downloadable and printable full-text, HTML or PDF articles. Enhanced encyclopedic format with drug monographs now organized alphabetically Completely expanded coverage of each drug, with more than 1,500 drug articles and information on adverse reactions and interactions Clearer, systematic organization of information for easier reading, including case histories to provide perspective on each listing Extensive bibliography with over 40,000 references A must-have reference work for any academic or medical library, pharmacologist, regulatory organization, hospital dispensary, or pharmaceutical company
Pharmaceutical Reform : a guide to improving performance and equity
This book applies an established analytical framework for health sector reform (Getting Health Reform Right, Oxford, 2004) to the performance problems of the pharmaceutical sector. The book is divided into three sections. The first section presents the basic ideas for analysis. It begins by insisting that reform start with a clear understanding of the performance deficiencies of the current system. Like all priority setting in the public sector, this 'definition of the problem' involves both ethical choices and political processes. Early chapters explain the foundations of these ideas and apply them to the pharmaceutical sector. The relationship of ultimate outcomes (like health status or risk protection) to classic health systems concepts like efficiency, access and quality is also explored. The last chapter in the first part is devoted to 'diagnosis'--explaining how to move from the definition of a problem to an understanding of how the functioning of the system produces the undesirable outcomes in question.The second part of the book devotes one chapter to each of five 'control knobs': finance, payment, organization, regulation and persuasion. These are sets of potential interventions that governments can use to improve pharmaceutical sector performance. Each chapter presents basic concepts and discusses examples of reform options. Throughout we provide 'conditional guidance'--avoiding the approach of a 'one size fits all' model of 'best practices' in these five arenas for reform. Instead we stress the need for local knowledge of political systems, administrative capacities, community values and market conditions in order to design pharmaceutical sector policies appropriate to a country's particular circumstances.The last part of the book is a set of teaching cases. Each is preceded by questions and is followed by a brief note on the lessons to be learned. The goal is to help readers develop the skills they need to deal effectively with pharmaceutical sector reform problems in their own countries.
Prescription Drugs
Explores issues related to Prescription Drugs, including -- Whether people are taking too many prescription drugs -- Prescription drug prices -- Prescription drug abuse -- Other problems related to prescription drugs; Each anthology is composed of a wide spectrum of sources written by many of the foremost authorities in their respective fields. This unique approach provides students with a concise view of divergent opinions on each topic.